Title text: If only we'd chosen 1944-12-02 08:45:52 as the Unix epoch, we could've combined two doomsday scenarios into one and added a really boring scene to that Roland Emmerich movie.

Explanation

The 2038 problem is a well-known problem with 32-bit Unix-based operating systems. Unix time is stored as a 32-bit signed integer on these systems, counting the number of seconds since 1970. In 2038, we overflow the highest number we can store in 32-bit integers, leading to unexpected behavior. The switch to 64-bit operating systems will most likely be complete by the year 2038, which is why the speaker is relieved. The reference to Y2K is a throwback to the year 2000 problem, in which people were concerned that computers storing digits as two numbers (eg: 99 to represent 1999) would cause problems when the year 2000 began. In both situations, the situation is largely resolved before the actual event, leading to little if no practical problems for users.

Transcript

I'm glad we're switching to 64-bit, because I wasn't looking forward to convincing people to care about the Unix 2038 problem.

Discussion

Good thing it's explained now, because I was relating 1944 and apocalypse with WW2. 108.162.212.196 21:57, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

"calculating dates beyond 2032 is still not solved on many 32-bit UNIX based systems today". Is the year 2032 a typo, should be 2038? If not, what is the relevance of 2032, should be explained. --Pudder (talk) 07:30, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Woah, I learned about the 2038 problem yesterday, and I clicked "Random page" today and got this comic! Anyone remember what that phenomenon is called? LuigiBrick (talk) 13:57, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

This wiki will have it's own 2038 problem, as when we get the 2038th comic (assuming both explain xkcd and the comic itself are still ongoing), http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2038 will have to be shared by two pages (currently, this link redirects to this comic, as does this one) 172.68.54.10 17:03, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

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